Rev. Donald Sensing
Trinity UMC, Franklin, TN
www.trinitymethodistchurch.com
pastor@trinitymethodistchurch.com

Shepherds
"Do not be afraid!" Those are the first words that announce the birth of the
son of God in Luke’s gospel. It’s a pretty common thing for angels to say in
the Bible. I’ve never seen an angel, but I suppose that they are impressive
creatures, even in a dream. Matthew records that when an angel appeared to
Joseph in a dream, the angel admonished Joseph not to be afraid.

So these shepherds are out in the fields watching their flocks. You probably
know that shepherding was about the worst job a man could have in Jesus’
day. It was a low-rent occupation. When the angel appeared, the shepherds
got pretty shook up. The passage says they were actually terrified when the
glory of the Lord shone around them.

We seem to live a great deal of our lives in some sort of fear. As children,
we are afraid of the monsters under the bed. Bill Cosby said he was always
afraid that when he was a boy, the snakes under his bed would grab him when
he got up to go to the bathroom, so he would yell at them, "Snakes! No fair
grabbing me if I have to go to the bathroom!" We try to tame our fears with
rules for the things which drive us to fear.
Some of us fear growing old. My father-in-law is eighty, and he says that
now that he is old, he’s afraid of not growing older. We are afraid of
losing our jobs, of becoming ill or injured. We fear losing our children or
other loved ones.

Maybe what we fear is change, any kind of change. All change is stressful.
Doctors know that when people experience any kind of big change, their
health can be affected adversely, even if the change seems good. Divorce or
losing one’s job is no worse for our short-term health than getting married
or winning the lottery. Change has consequences.

But the passage says the shepherds were *terrified* when the glory of the
Lord shone around them. In our culture these days, we don’t associate terror
with the appearance of God. Terror is something in horror movies.

The shepherds were terrified at God’s glory not because God is terrible, but
maybe because God was about to change things. When they were encompassed
with God’s glory and saw the angel, the shepherds knew something was about
to be different. They were going to be thrown out of their comfort box and
yanked into a new thing. They didn’t know what it was, not yet. But they did
know, deep in their hearts, that something big was going on, something by
God’s own hand, and it terrified them.

It’s easy to get all warm and fuzzy about the stories of Jesus’ birth. So
stop and consider for a moment that the nativity was an occasion for terror.
When the glory of the Lord shone around the shepherds, it revealed them more
clearly than the brightest spotlight. There they were for God to see, just
as they really were. And it terrified them because they knew that before God
all secrets are revealed and nothing is hidden.

A healthy sense of fear and trembling would be a good thing for us as we
consider the nativity. For while it is true that Jesus came into the world
to save the world, it’s also true that now we have no excuse before God.
When God has put on flesh and walked and lived and slept and spoken and died
and lived again, right among us—then we have to way to claim we didn’t know
God or weren’t aware of what God wanted. If we stopped and thought really
hard about Jesus Christ lying in the manger, it would scare us half to
death. We would be terrified.

But not for long! Jesus came in love, not in threat. So it’s good to hear
the first words announcing Jesus’ birth: "Do not be afraid." God is not
remote, God is here. That really is good news of great joy.

The shepherds heard the angels and listened to the heavenly chorus. When the
angels had gone home, the shepherds looked at one another in astonishment
and said, "Let’s go!" And off they went to Bethlehem to see the thing which
had happened, which the Lord had told them about.

It is the last moment their lives will be the same as before. Perhaps they
vaguely suspect that the door of history is swinging wide, and the shepherds
are the hinge.

They found Mary and Joseph and the baby, lying in the manger, just as the
angels had said. We have no idea what transpired during their visit. The
story leaps directly to the moment afterward. The shepherds left the manger
and went around town, telling everyone what they had heard and seen.

There was a young girl whose parents took her out west. One of their stops
was the Grand Canyon. The girl stood open-mouthed before the great chasm—a
mile deep, eighteen miles across, a hundred miles long! Then she exclaimed,
"Something must have happened here!"

That’s how it was with the first evangelists, those shepherds who ran around
town. They had seen something amazing and enormous in its implications: not
a great geological wonder, but the greater wonder of a savior born. So they
darted through the dark streets, shouting, "Something happened here!"

Everyone who heard the news was amazed. Maybe they were amazed that a bunch
of shepherds would be running around town shouting about God rather than out
in the fields with their sheep. Maybe they were amazed that an angelic
singing group had given a private performance that night. They could have
been amazed that a little baby could be a savior for the people.

I think they were amazed at the fervor of the shepherds in proclaiming the
good news. Something shook the shepherds out of their ordinary religious
complacency. It lit a fuse under them to become evangelistic fireballs. What
dull lives shepherds led, yet here they were, all excited about a new thing
God had done and what it signified.

The story is told of a fifth-grade child who was terribly burned in an
accident. The doctors said the boy would be hospitalized for many weeks.
After the boy was taken out of the critical-care unit, one of the fifth
grade teachers packed up his school books and homework assignments and
visited him in the hospital. Two days later the burn ward’s chief nurse
called her. "What did you say to Christopher?" the nurse demanded. The
teacher started to apologize but the nurse interrupted. "You don’t
understand," she said. "We have been very worried about Chris’ will to live.
He was in such despair that we thought he had given up. But now his whole
attitude has changed. His spirits are high, he’s taking the treatments and
doing much better. I asked him what was different. He said, ‘They wouldn’t
send books and homework to a dying boy, would they?’"

When the angels serenaded the shepherds, and when the shepherds saw the
infant savior, they suddenly realized that God wouldn’t do this wonderful
thing for a people he had written off. The human race is not terminal. God
would not send God’s own son to heal humanity if humanity was incurable. So
the townspeople were amazed at the transformation of the shepherds and the
new life in them. "Let’s go!" exclaimed the shepherds, and off they went to
tell everyone of the new hope and salvation found in the manger.

The shepherds returned to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all
the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote that Luke’s verse can be loosely translated that
the shepherds went back to work different people because of what they had
seen and heard. Their glorifying of God means not just verbal profusion of
praise, but a reoriented life, a renewed understanding of how to live.

It’s easy to overlook that Luke ends the shepherds’ story with the reminder
that they saw and heard things which were as they had been told. When our
Christmas season is over and we have returned to our usual routines, we need
to remember that the gospel we have and the salvation we are given is just
that which we have been told. The grace of God isn’t mysterious and
incomprehensible—it is just as we have been told in God’s Word. A savior was
born in Bethlehem almost two thousand years ago, just as we have been told.
Like the shepherds, we will soon live in a world when the memory of
Christmas is overcome by other events. The shepherds’ sheep still got sick
or attacked by wolves. Our cars will still break down and we’ll still have
bills to pay. On the outside, everything seems the same. But something big
has happened, and something is different. God is with us and the future
looks good!

The glory of the Lord has shone around us, and through our doubts and fears
there is a voice: "Fear not, for behold, there are glad tidings of great
joy. Unto you is born a savior!"